Benin City glowed beneath the red dusk sky. The streets throbbed with life—vendors calling, masquerades swirling in bright fabrics, the smell of roasted plantain and pepper soup rising into the warm air. It was the season of Igue, the great festival honoring the Oba and the spirits of the land.
Everywhere, drums beat. Their rhythms called to ancestors, to masquerades, to the living and the dead.
But not every drum should be played.
⸻
Osaro was a drummer, the pride of his family. His late father had once played in the royal courtyard, and Osaro dreamed of following in his footsteps. His hands were swift, precise, blessed with talent that made people turn when he struck the skin of a drum.
That morning, as preparations for the festival filled the market square, Osaro noticed an old man sitting alone under an udala tree. Before him lay a drum unlike any Osaro had seen—its wood dark as charred bone, its surface etched with jagged carvings that seemed to shift in the light.
The old man’s eyes, milky with age, fixed on Osaro. He beckoned with a crooked finger.
“Osaro,” he rasped, voice brittle like dried palm fronds, “do you wish to play a rhythm that no ear forgets?”
Osaro frowned. “You know my name?”
The old man, Omoregie, smiled without mirth. “I know the names of all whom the spirits choose.” He tapped the drum. “Take it. It is waiting.”
Osaro hesitated. The drum’s skin looked too taut, too dark—almost human. But pride overrode fear.
He reached out. The instant his fingers touched the drum, he swore it pulsed, as if a heartbeat lived inside.
⸻
That night, inside his small mud-walled hut, Osaro could not resist.
He struck the drum.
The sound shook the rafters. His calabashes rattled, the oil lamp sputtered, goats outside bleated in alarm. The rhythm was unlike any he had known—deep, hungry, echoing as though the earth itself responded.
He played again, faster. His hands seemed no longer his own, pulled into patterns that clawed at the silence.
Then the whispers came.
Low, insistent, in a tongue he did not know. The shadows on the walls stretched and curled, forming shapes that shivered like spirits pressing against the veil.
Osaro stopped abruptly, sweat dripping. The whispers lingered, fading slowly, as though disappointed.
The drum gleamed in the firelight, waiting.
⸻
The next day, the festival roared to life. Masquerades leapt and spun, their masks flashing gold and red, cowries clinking at their ankles. Drummers lined the square, filling the air with layered rhythms that called to gods and ancestors alike.
Osaro carried the cursed drum into the arena.
The moment he struck it, silence fell.
The sound dwarfed all others—deep, violent, commanding. The masquerades froze mid-dance, their limbs jerking as though pulled by unseen cords.
Gasps rose from the crowd.
Osaro’s hands blurred. The drum pounded through him, not with him. The ground trembled. The masquerades’ shadows elongated, writhing like serpents. One dancer collapsed, blood pouring from his ears. Another clawed at her own mask, shrieking.
The people of Benin scattered in terror. Mothers snatched their children, chiefs shouted prayers. Yet Osaro could not stop.
The drum was playing him.
At last, his hands faltered. He tore them from the skin.
The arena fell silent. Bodies twitched on the ground. Dozens of eyes turned on him with horror. Before him, the drum’s carvings glistened wet, as if drinking blood.
⸻
That night, Osaro was dragged before the palace chiefs. In the courtyard, under the torchlight, they demanded answers.
“Where did you find this abomination?” asked Chief Eghosa, the eldest among them.
Osaro told them of Omoregie, the old man under the tree.
The chiefs exchanged grim looks.
“There is a tale,” Eghosa said at last, his voice heavy, “of a drum carved during the inter-kingdom wars. Not from the wood of iroko, not with the skin of goat or cow—but with human sacrifice. The drum was bound to enslave spirits, to summon them at will. It brought victories drenched in blood. When the wars ended, it was said the drum was sealed away. But such things never die. They wait.”
Osaro trembled. “Why give it to me?”
Eghosa’s gaze was sharp. “Because the drum does not serve the drummer. The drummer serves the drum.”
⸻
Osaro tried to rid himself of it.
He hurled it into the Ikpoba River. The water roared, swallowed it—then spat it back onto the shore.
He buried it deep in the red earth beyond the walls of the city. At dawn, it sat by his bed.
He abandoned it in the sacred grove. That night, its rhythm thudded in his dreams until he woke—only to find it leaning against his door.
The drum had chosen him.
⸻
The whispers grew stronger. At night, shadows pressed against the walls of his hut. His chest ached until his hands touched the drumskin. Each time he struck, spirits poured forth—hollow-eyed figures with mouths stretched in silent screams.
“You are ours,” they hissed. “Play.”
He played until his palms split, until blood smeared the drum’s skin. The spirits feasted, swelling, clawing at the world.
By dawn, the whispers promised him glory, power, immortality—if he would only keep playing.
⸻
When the festival resumed, Osaro stepped into the square once more. His cursed rhythm cracked the masks of the masquerades. Behind them was no face, only emptiness. The shadows that surged forth clawed at the living, dragging them to the ground.
The chiefs shouted for him to stop. But Osaro’s hands no longer belonged to him.
In a final act of defiance, he seized a shard of broken mask and slashed his palm. Blood smeared across the drum.
The rhythm stuttered. The spirits recoiled with shrieks. The cursed drum fell silent.
⸻
The chiefs, with the Oba’s blessing, sealed the drum with chains, buried it beneath the palace, and covered it with sacrifices and incantations. They forbade Osaro from ever touching another drum.
But some nights, when Benin grows quiet, drummers say they hear it beneath the palace grounds: a faint heartbeat, steady, waiting.
And in his dreams, Osaro still feels his hands moving, striking a rhythm that is not his own.
The cursed drum of Benin has chosen him. And it will play until the end of time.
